Facilitating Church Planting Movements #2 - Biblically Faithful and Culturally Relevant churches

Stetzer shared he following about Bibically Faithful and Culturally Relevant churches.

If we are going to see church plants succeed, we will have to have churches that are Biblically faithful, culturally relevant, counter cultural communities that reproduce.

It is long, hard and difficult work to create reproducing churches. Reproducing is like having a baby. It is painful, bloody, smelly but glorious!

1. Biblically faithful – centrality of Christ's cross and resurrection
2. Culturally relevant – almost every denomination selects a "culture" and feels it is their duty to reproduce that culture and call it "the kingdom of God." For Southern Baptists that looks like low church Protestantism from the 1800's singing Fanny Crosby hymns. For Lutherans it may look like 15^th – 17^th century Northern European church hymnody, liturgical forms, etc. If that is all we can reproduce, we will have poor results. In dealing with issues of culture: Our Christology must inform both our Missiology and our Ecclesiology. Question ultimately is "What expression of a Lutheran New Testament church works best in this culture?"
3. Countercultural Communities – We need to look like the culture around us (language, dress, music, etc.) but we need to live radically different. Our 21^st century problem is that for most churches they look different then the culture but the people live the same as everyone around them!

Big question: How can we move from decline to evangelization and church reproduction?

I think his observation about how many local churches today look very different from the culture (in terms of music, vocabulary, use of technology, culturally) is true. Perhaps we get deceived into thinking that we are therefore living radically different than the world. But - Stetzer's observation is that in most ways we live just like the culture around us. People still use power to get their way in the church; marriages don't do much better in the church; racism and class envy are all there as well. The challenge for missional churches and new mission starts is how to live radically differently than the culture but be diligent in discovering the missional keys which can unlock the culture so that message of God's love in Christ can actually be heard and experienced.